Can't Buy Off the Lightning
by DrWorm
Summary: [The Dead Zone] "Fruit juice and cookies made up the heroes’ feast; band-aids and puffs of cotton were distributed in lieu of Purple Hearts." Johnny saw the fire, but he couldn't save everyone. Mild slash.


Note: Written for the 'fire' challenge at contrelamontre on livejournal. Strictly book universe.

Can't Buy Off the Lightning

It took a very long time to sink in. Although the image seemed to be branded on the insides of his eyelids, giving him a horrific engraver's view in red and black every time he blinked, it still did not seem real.

Not that it had actually happened, _that_ was real enough, he had known _that _from the moment he had felt Chuck pull him into a tight, thankful embrace and clap him twice on the back for added emphasis. _That_ was as real as real could be, and so was the dull hatred he felt for his ephemeral ability to step into the shoes of the past and the future, to slip into another's senses so effortlessly, only to slip right back out again, shucking the other person like an extra sweater on a warm spring day. The fire was real, Cathy's was real, and Roger Chatsworth's hands slipping beneath his armpits and hefting him from his seat at the kitchen table were most certainly real—but the frantic nurses, the wailing sirens, the bitter and dry taste of ashes on his tongue… these things were as unreal to him as smoke, as Chuck's reluctance to so much as brush his shoulder, as the heaps of charred bodies smoldering in front of the exits,  and as the reality that those mounds of bones (six or seven deep, he had said so himself; he had seen them) had once been people, young people, with hopes and dreams and the misguided perception of a future stretching out in front of them.

The hospital, busy though it was, had been glad for the party's impromptu donations to the Blood Bank. Fruit juice and cookies made up the heroes' feast; band-aids and puffs of cotton were distributed in lieu of Purple Hearts. _In recognition of your great service to your country_, Johnny thought, stifling a bitter laugh. The nurses in charge had given him a once-over with pitying eyes and wan, stretched smiles before asking his height and his weight, though they'd been able to make the visual calculations with little error. He was too thin to give blood, and the irony was absurd. Shelley had commented on it just that evening, and how many times had Chuck teased him about his "scrawny bod" with that easy, good-natured humor he had? Johnny had argued wearily for a short time, before deciding that it just wasn't worth it. So he'd gone to sit by one of the large, square windows in the makeshift donation area, and from his out-of-the-way perch he'd watched the Chatsworths, and Chuck's girl—the one who had compared him to Carrie in terms of pyrokinetic skill—and most of the young, healthy kids from the basement graduation party donate their most precious bodily fluid, unaware that they would not have had the chance for this good deed had Johnny Smith not seen death the instant he'd touched Chuck Chatsworth at the lawn party, when the world had still been smothered in humidity and disbelief..

By the time Roger gave his shoulder a hysterically uncharacteristic tentative tap, Johnny had accepted most of it. He'd used his time by the window, forgotten in the energetic and frantic bustle of emergency and tragedy, to wade gingerly into the waters of loss, immersing one part of himself at a time and waiting to adjust before continuing on, just as a cautious person would step slowly into a cold swimming pool until the water covered their head and the temperature became warm by comparison. Roger's touch, equivalent to being pushed and dunked beneath the water's surface before he was entirely ready, was surprising but welcome; when he looked up, his eye caught the unmistakable shine of the Beige Badge of Courage, partially covered by the rolled-up sleeve of the other man's faded blue button-down shirt. "Hey there, darlin'," his tone was light, but forced and trembling at the edges. "Ready to mosey on home?"

Johnny smiled, but the effort was so great that he was sure it looked grotesque. "Didn't know the dance was over."

"It isn't," Roger shrugged, "But it looks like we've about done our part…" He hesitated and ducked his head in a curiously childish gesture, not wanting to meet Johnny's eyes. "And I think Shelley will kill me if you drop off again here in the hospital instead of in your own bed."

Johnny opened his mouth, ready to tell Roger that he hadn't fallen asleep, he'd only been coming to terms with eighty or ninety deaths he felt partially responsible for. But when he looked up, he realized that the explanation would be pointless; Roger already knew. Perhaps he was struggling with the same realty, the same feelings. Johnny had no real way of knowing; he'd found that his employer had a tighter lock on his emotions, and his face was stripped of all thought besides concern for the well-being of his son's tutor. _Pet psychic, now_, Johnny thought as he began to stand up, surprising himself with his second flash of bitterness. His leg ached from being folded and constricted in such a cramped sitting position for so long, and when he put his weight on it, he stumbled. Roger caught him, kept him from sprawling face first to the floor as he had several times before. But now it was different because Roger was waiting with grim certainty for Johnny to prophesize his death after that instant of touch, just as he had his son's. In that moment, Roger Chatsworth—with his skepticism and pragmatism and easy, soothing voice that had denied the truth of Johnny's prediction and turned hoarse when he'd yelled at Patty Strachan to shut up after her _Carrie_ comparison—suddenly seemed more human to Johnny than he ever had before.

But no vision came, no fire burned—_because lightning never strikes the same place twice in one day!_ In the back of his mind, Johnny laughed wildly at his own tasteless joke—nor did Roger remove his hand. After a moment, he took Johnny's arm to steady him, and they started toward the hospital doors together.

"May I have this last dance, miss?" Roger's low voice thrummed in Johnny's ear, and he found himself laughing in spite of himself.

"Well, I don't know, sir," Johnny snorted a little and shook his head. "Gotta dance with the one what brung ya, after all."

"Too true, too true," he murmured, tossing a sharp wave to his wife, who waved gamely back. "But 'the one what brung ya,' is going to hang around a little longer and take Chuck home whenever he and the others are ready."

"Well, then," Johnny turned his face forward as they pushed the hospital entrance doors open and stepped into the night; breeze whipped across his face and he was dismayed to find that it still smelled and tasted of ash. "I suppose you'll just have to take me home, soldier."

"I suppose so," the mild surprise in Roger's voice did not register in Johnny's ears; he was too far gone, staring into the distant horizon as they walked through the crowded parking lot to Roger's car and thinking about how many had not gone home from the dance that night, how many had died instead in a fire in a little joint called Cathy's, which was perfect in all aspects except for its pesky lack of a lightning rod. He thought of all the kids who had died just after their graduation, who had doubtlessly thought, up until smoke had clouded the air and choked their lungs, that they would live forever. He wished that they hadn't been proven so wrong.

Roger stopped by the passenger door of his Buick, fingers slipping from Johnny's stiff forearm to the limp flesh of his hand; he twined them together in a way that made Johnny's heart ache simultaneously for his father and his erstwhile girl, Sarah. "Thank you," his words were clipped and almost unreal in the breezy silence of the summer night. "Thank you for saving my son."

"I had to," Johnny said, and his own voice was abrupt and tonelessly hollow. He barely reacted when he was pulled closer for an embrace.

"You saved my son's life," Roger whispered, pulling Johnny to him carefully, overly aware of the younger man's fragility. "In spite of me, you saved my son's life. I can't thank you enough." 

Johnny felt the pressure of lips on his forehead, kissing him where he had fallen so many years ago on the ice, christening it belatedly. _And here my troubles began_, Johnny though ruefully, smiling so that Roger Chatsworth could not see. His eyes drifted over his shoulder, focusing again on the haze of the horizon, watching with a calm that had nothing to do with the comfort of being held and everything to do with the knowledge of inevitability. He watched the lightning dance and spark far in the distance, lightning that didn't stop for graduation parties, for rich men, for good men, for children, or for psychics.

And as Roger tipped his chin up as far as it would go, kissing his lips hesitantly as his thumb explored the jagged edges of the scar that traveled the side of Johnny's neck all the way below the collar of his thin sweater, Johnny Smith knew that he would fight the lightning again, someday. And when the time came, he knew no one would thank him.


End file.
